All posts by Gerard McLean

TourneyCentral and Dayton Daily News to present a hyper-localism workshop at the 2008 NSCAA

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TourneyCentral and www.daytondailynews.com to present a workshop on hyper-localism at the 2008 NSCAA

TourneyCentral announced today that it has arranged to present a workshop, in collaboration with the Dayton Daily News (www.daytondailynews.com) on soccer organizations and hyper-localism.

Hyper-localism is the practice of reporting news stories that happening in your own neighborhoods and backyards. Club soccer is hyper-local for most newspapers and the soccer public demands coverage. Yet reporters are spread thin covering other hyper-local stories so soccer typically gets ignored.

“This workshop is the examination of a year-long hyper-local experiment whereby TourneyCentral provides www.DaytonDailyNews.com and other local Cox Ohio newspaper sites with rich human interest stories related to the tournaments it hosts in southwest Ohio,” says Gerard McLean, Principle at TourneyCentral. “We hope the the participants will walk away with a game-plan on working with your local newspapers to get the media coverage their soccer organization needs and deserves.”

The content appears on all Cox Ohio newspaper web sites, but most prominently at www.daytondailynews.com/soccer

The workshop will be held on Friday, January 18 at 10:30am and presented jointly by Ray Marcano, Internet General Manager with Cox Ohio and Gerard McLean.

About TourneyCentral
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

Visit us at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis, MO.

TourneyCentral facilitates tournament partnership at the 2008 NSCAA Convention

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Four tournaments, the Novi Jaquar Invitational, the adidas Warrior Soccer Classic, the Pikes Peak Invitational and the Veterans Invitational will be showing at the 2008 NSCAA Convention January 17-19, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Four tournaments, the Novi Jaquar Invitational, the adidas Warrior Soccer Classic, the Pikes Peak Invitational and the Veterans Invitational will be showing at the 2008 NSCAA Convention January 17-19, 2008 in Baltimore, Maryland.

The collaborative effort was an initiative by TourneyCentral to expand the tournament presence within the trade.

“Tournaments of this caliber NEED to establish a presence at the NSCAA,” says Gerard McLean, Principle at TourneyCentral. “A booth at the largest soccer trade show in the US tells the marketplace that you are serious and have reached a certain level of sophistication.”

The tournaments have been placed in booth 2724 which is a corner booth.

“Great placement,” adds McLean. “They will do well and the goal is to expand out the tournament presence. Long-term, I hope every tournament we do eventually shows at the NSCAA. We’ll help them get here.”

TourneyCentral will be showing at the NSCAA in their own expanded booth, 2813, which is an endcap placement on a cross-roads aisle. Mead Cup, another TourneyCentral tournament will also be showing in their own booth, 2803 and have been at the NSCAA for the past 4 years.

About TourneyCentral
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

Visit us at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis, MO.

TICO Score dips toe in the soccer tournament ranking pool

Tournaments

With a short post on Back of the Net, Larry Miller let the cat out of the bag on TICO Score. Yes, folks it is coming and it will be insanely great.

In short, Larry’s post was:

For a few months BOTN has been telling you that a superior tournament ranking system to the one currently in place will be coming. BOTN is happy to be able to give you the first look to TICO scores, a system for ranking tournaments without the influence of advertising, or ownership of rankings by tournaments.

Independent, free of politics, honest.

The scoring analogy of TICO scores is your FICO Credit Score. It has a base number and a ceiling number. It can go up or down depending on your credit performance. TICO scores works the same way.

Parents/Player and Coaches will be the people evaluating your tournament. If they have good things to say your score goes up and if not it goes down. No outside influence from sponsors, friends, etc… Just your input from a detailed on-line form.

BOTN is excited to give our community a first look at TICO scores. The links at the the top of the page are hot to help you navigate. Please understand the complete TICO Score website will not be ready for another month or two.

So, just keep watching for the latest TICO Score news.

Is search important for soccer tournaments?

Tournaments

The really short answer is no. Most teams do not find soccer tournaments by searching on Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com etc. Now, for the really long explanation and supporting documentation.

First an article by Bob Carrigan, president of IDG Communications that appears in the October issue of OMMA Magazine, the sort of beacon for the online marketing world (banners, ads, search engines placement, etc.)

With all the discussion — and anxiety among media companies — about “world domination” by the major search companies, you might think that nearly all activity on the Web begins with search. While the amount of traffic from search engines is clearly on the rise, many of the sites at my company, IDG, are starting to see a trend that a lot of publishers whom I speak with are also seeing: Traffic from organic search is leveling off as a percentage of total traffic, while traffic from direct-navigation visits is increasing.

If you need to take a few minutes to read the whole thing, go ahead; we’ll still be here.

Basically, the search engine traffic we are seeing from the search engines is a search on your tournament name. We are also seeing searches for common locations, like the name of the park you are playing in, the key sponsor, etc. But, all of this traffic is generated because the team knows where they want to play and is searching for YOU, not something like soccer tournaments in Ohio in May.

Our advice: If your soccer tournament does not already have a separate domain that is specific and similar to your tournament name, get one. And make sure it is what your teams know you as. For example, your official tournament name might be The ABC Corporation Kick the Grass Soccer Invitational, but if your guest teams are saying thing like, Are you going to the Kick Grass this year? you probably want to register www.kickgrass.com (don’t search for that name, it is already taken and parked by a cyber-squatter hoping to make a few bucks.)

Do not rely on your soccer club web site to market your soccer tournament. The fastest way to get your soccer tournament to show up in the search engines is to use a domain that specifically describes your soccer tournament to your potential audience. And make sure your web pages use your name frequently and in the title of every page. Or, just sign up with TourneyCentral and we’ll take care of all these details for you.